Goodbye Cloudbridge

Sometimes you find somewhere that you know will always have a special place in your heart. Cloudbridge is one of those places. It’s partly the sheer outstanding beauty of the place, partly the wonderful, crazy assortment of people we met there and partly the sense of fulfilment we have from our work here. These three marvellous splashes of colour in our lives exploded on our canvas creating a painting that will be engraved into our souls for a good deal of time to come.

It is so rare to find people who are truly passionate about what they believe in and what they stand for, and yet Bro and I have been fortunate enough to meet so many on our trip. Tom and Frank are two of those people. They live for that forest, they breathe the forest, and they are part of the forest and I have rarely met such dedicated souls of the Earth. These guys are up at 6, they work all day, they hammer, they dig, they plant, they drive, they manage, they fix, they rescue, they create, they cultivate, they nurture, they observe, they support…and Cloudbridge grows and recovers and breathes and relaxes a little, knowing that it is in safe hands.

And then there’s everyone else. We have loved our experiences of volunteering for many reasons, but partly because of the wonderful hodgepodge of people we meet, all making their own way through the world, on their own mission to make it a little better. The guys we met at Cloudbridge, have certainly enriched our lives through knowing them, and have taught me so much about the kind of person I want to be.

So Frank, Tom, Linda, Genevieve, Charles, Anna, Alan, Bob, David, Jenn, Barb, Michelle, Simon and Brigitte…I salute you!

Gradually getting there

David's leaving do

Tree maintenance up the Montagne trail with Frank

Another bumpy ride in the truck...contrary to appearances (and despite the fact that Bro is hugging two boxes of wine), we had not had a single morsel of alcohol...promise!

Moth brooches...all the rage in CR!

Michelle's last night 

Bracing the chilly waters!

Beautiful picture of Bro's of Marcos...local farmer, fresh-milk supplier and epic moustache-sporter!

A last goodbye with Team Cook, Tom and Linda at the bustop in San Gerardo

PS… Why did Cloudbridge decide to cook a vegetarian diet?

Cloudbridge (http://www.cloudbridge.org/) as I’ve mentioned before is an area of land that was once deforested and for a long time was used for agriculture. Founders, Jenny and Ian Giddy, then bought the land and have systematically worked to reforest the area to allow the natural habitat to regenerate. 

The Reserve’s mission is to preserve, reforest, and educate, so the students visiting this week had an intense programme to follow which was designed to help them develop an understanding of the importance of protecting and regenerating land to preserve biodiversity. Nobel as this idea is, and much as I believe the message was thoroughly and convincingly delivered to these kids, the big challenge is getting the students to understand that what they do at home also has an impact on what goes on in places such as Costa Rica. As I’m sure you know, one of the big ways in which we all have an impact on the world around is from what we eat.

Firstly, I’m not here to preach-Bro and I are meat-eaters so it would be a little hypocritical-however, we have made the decision to stop eating beef and tuna (tuna is another story), and we are trying to drastically reduce our meat consumption, and go veggie as much as possible. I would like you to understand our reasons, so that it’s at least on your radar.

So why do Cloudbridge (and we) care about this so much?

(Nb. it's worth mentioning that these are my own words, not Cloudbridge's)

Well we all know about the population crisis -7.3 million people and counting (Nb. when I was born in 1986, the figure was just shy of 5 billion…this scares me a lot...If you are interested, this is a really interesting (and petrifying!) website regarding world population numbers- http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ at the time of posting the population sat at 7,397,297,610). Current projections for future population numbers vary greatly (the UN currently predict it will be 9.6 billion by 2050), but regardless of the estimates, there is no doubt that our world is going to have to house a great many more people in the future than it currently does.

But what is perhaps even more significant than our rapidly expanding population and its ever demanding supply of mouths to feed, is that of these 7 billion people, the proportion of people who have access to varied meat diets (not to mention other resources) is expanding rapidly. The UN anticipate a significant increase in the demand livestock products and project this at an increase of about 70% between 2005 and 2050), driven by  a range of factors, most significantly a growing world population, rising affluence and increased urbanization*¹.

And why shouldn’t the rest of the world's population demand a better standard of living and a more varied diet? Us Brits have been living in an incredibly indulgent, meat-filled, consumerist world for a long time, so we can hardly resent others from wanting the same. The problem is, the world can’t sustain it. To quote George Monbiot “There is enough to meet everyone’s need, even in a world of 10 billion people. There is not enough to meet everyone’s greed, even in a world of 2 billion people.”

The world’s population is increasing by approximately 1.2% per year, whereas livestock numbers are increasing at a staggering 2.4%*². In fact raising livestock apparently  uses three quarters of the world’s agricultural land, and much of our cereal crops are used to feed them. Vast swathes of forest land is being cleared to provide for this increase in demand, and like here in Costa Rica, many existing farmers are switching to cattle farming as both the demand, and consequent price of beef is increasing, and there is therefore an increasing incentive for farmers to do so. The UN recently cited the meat industry as one of the biggest threats to the environment and contributes to 14.4% of human-related GHG emissions (that's a whopping...7.1 gigatonnes CO2 -eq per annum!!)*¹ so in a nutshell, things have got to change. There's not enough room in the world for a 7 billion full-time meat-eaters.

This is an interesting survey based on US food consumption, showing the relative carbon footprints of various diets. 

(Nb. Figures are per year).

As you can see, according to this study, the average American eating an average meat-eating diet produces 0.8tCO2e more than a vegetarian, and 0.6tCO2e more than a meat-eater who does not eat beef.

Why the difference?
So why does a meat-based diet have such a significant carbon footprint, and have so much more of an impact on the environment than a vegetarian diet? For one, as mentioned above, livestock take up approximately 75-80% of total anthropogenic land use*³ . In fact, a whopping 25% of the global land surface is currently taken up by grazing ruminants (eg cattle and sheep), contributing to exceptionally high rates of deforestation and land degradation. Bro and I just went on a hike through an area of Costa Rica near Monteverde which whilst 70 years ago would have been primary rainforest, is now barren grassland that has been so heavily degraded by grazing cattle that the quality of the soil is now so poor that it would struggle to be reforested, even if cattle were removed and efforts made to do so. In addition to this, all of the animals that we eat also require feed crops. The amount of land currently used to feed our livestock stands at around 34% of global cropland*⁴.

Now think back to your pyramids of biomass from school....Only approximately 10% of energy from each level in the food chain actually ends up as biomass in the next stage of the food chain. The rest is wasted in life processes (eg. movement, heat, excretion etc.).

So...

10,000 calories of wheat energy → 1000 calories of beef energy → 100 calories of human energy

However, if humans chose to eat the products from one trophic level further down the food chain, there would be approximately 10 times the amount of energy available to them: 

10,000 calories of wheat → 1000 calories of human energy

For want of a better diagram, this might give you an idea of what I mean...

...or perhaps this will help you to visualise it a little easier...

Source *5

So essentially this suggests that if the population was made up of vegetarians, then much less land would have to be used in order to support our diets. More people could be fed in a given area of land, and we could go at least some way towards combating food shortages....Some way. Indeed, a recent study from the Netherlands found that in theory "if everyone in the world switched to vegetarianism or veganism tomorrow, by 2050 carbon emissions related to the agriculture industry would have been reduced by 17 percent, methane emissions by 24 percent, and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 percent"*³. Quite powerful figures. It also found that up to 2,700 Mha of pasture and 100 Mha of cropland could be abandoned. If this land we then left to regrow, it could then go some way in reversing the impact on our environment.

So why beef?

Why is beef particularly bad? Well firstly its production uses 28 times more land than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions*⁶. Beef and cattle milk production account for the majority of carbon emissions, respectively contributing 41 and 20 percent of the livestock sector’s emissions whereas pig meat and poultry meat contribute 9 percent of emissions*¹. „ (Incidentally, feed production and processing and enteric fermentation from ruminants (essentially cow farts) represent 45 and 39 percent of sector emissions respectively).

Have a look at the graph below-

*1

So as you can see Beef and dairy cattle have a far more significant footprint than other meat-products, beef contributing 1827 million tonnes CO2e than pork. 

The graph below shows the amount of carbon dioxide equivalents per kcal of food for various food groups and as you can see the ruminants produce significantly higher emissions than the others. 

The main message I want to pass on is that I think we all need to start thinking about the impact our own diet has on the wider world, and to generally think a little more long-term and a little more globally. As I said before, I'm not trying to convince people to give up meat altogether (I of course haven't myself yet, although of course that would be great if we all could) - let's be realistic, let's make it simple, and make easy changes in small, bitesized chunks...then maybe one day soon that step into vegetarianism won't seem like such a big one for any of us!

Here are some ideas for what you could do to start reducing your impact today-

• Why not try having three meat-free days a week? Perhaps alternating a veggie day with non-veggie day?
• How about reducing your meat intake to only at the weekend? 
• Try some meat-alternatives, eg. substitute beef mince with quorn mince (I once tricked Brodie into thinking he was eating beef mince, when it was actually quorn and he didn't even notice!)
• Why not try cutting out the worst offenders, eg. beef? Or if you really can't at least try to limit how much of it you eat, and substitute it for other less intensive meats where possible (eg. swap beef mince for turkey mince/have a chicken roast rather than a lamb roast).
• Why not try only eating meat when you eat out?
• Try out some veggie recipes. You never know, you might love them and a veggie dish is usually a lot cheaper than a meaty one! Here are some good sites- http://allrecipes.com/recipes/87/everyday-cooking/vegetarian/ and http://www.myrecipes.com/vegetarian-recipes  (or better still, buy a veggie cookbook!).
• Have a bet with a friend to see who can last the longest without beef/meat etc. Nothing like a bit of competitiveness to get you into something!
• If you HAVE to eat beef, make sure you source locally produced beef (therefore with a  smaller transport carbon footprint), and where possible buy from sustainable, organic farms.
• Talk to people about why you are doing it! -Start the discussion, and raise the profile!

...I'm going to try too! :)

If you've got this far, thank you for taking the time to indulge me buy reading my waffle. Hopefully it's at least some food for thought anyway (see what I did there?!)....

(...And we haven't even started talking about the over-use of antibiotics in farm animals...but that's for another time!...) ;)

References

*1 http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3437e/i3437e.pdf  -Nb. this is a really interesting document if this topic interests you!
*2 http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/publications/files/key_findings_wpp_2015.pdf
*3 http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/banr/AnimalProductionMaterials/StehfestClimate.pdf

*4 Steinfeld H, Gerber P, Wassenaar T, Castel V, Rosales M, de Haan C (2006) Livestock’s long shadow. Environmental issues and options. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome
*5 http://schoolbag.info/biology/humans/33.html 
*6 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/21/giving-up-beef-reduce-carbon-footprint-more-than-cars

Kentucky Fried un-Chicken

So I might have mentioned in a previous blog that back in December Tom asked Bro and I if we’d come back to Cloudbridge in January to cater (yes cater) for a school group of 15-18 year olds from that world-renown land of carnivores, Kentucky….and it needed to be vegetarian. We perhaps foolishly agreed, as we would be doing it with two of our fave volunteers from Cloudbridge-Anna and Alan, who not only were vegetarian, but can also cook. We, however are neither vegetarian, nor can cook, but we decided it would be a challenge, and definitely something new, and aside from that it meant coming back to Cloudbridge after our Xmas trip away which we were more than happy to do.

Alan and Anna on a Team Cook walk (and very chilly swim!) to a near-bye waterfall in Cloudbridge

So after a lot of meetings in December (aka drinking lots of coffee, whilst chatting about food), and a LOT of emails over xmas, we arrived at The World’s Longest Shopping List. To give you a taste, it included 371 eggs, 270 tomatoes, and 120 bananas, and took me about 3 hours to compile once we had our recipes. It also involved A Shit-Load of beans, as Tom was pretty adamant that we pack everything full of protein. This was going to be epic!

And so on the 4^th Jan we arrived back in San Isidro to meet Tom, Anna and Bob to unrdergo the Mother of all shopping trips….and thus (with a 6-hour supermarket sweep) we began our week as amateur chefs.

So!!! How did it go?!!...

Well….it turns out 16 year old Kentuckyians don’t like beans. Or lentils. Or tomatoes. Or anything that is a ‘meat substitute’. Or anything not ‘American’. This meant that our veggie burgers, homemade baked beans, lentil shepherd’s pie and local-style gallo pinto went down like a led balloon.

However…our desserts went down a storm, as did anything involving cream, curry or anything that did not include the categories mentioned above. So I’d say it was a mixed bag….the Cloudbridge and Teaching staff loved it, and were absolutely genuine in their praise, and we four all thought it tasted great. We gave the students evaluation forms, and it turns out one of them ate nothing but the spaghetti and pancakes in the whole week (serves her right for being fussy), we apparently made far too large portions, and as one of them so aptly wrote “you looked after us extremely well, and the food was wonderful. I just didn’t appreciate it all as I’m American and therefore don’t have a palate!” I think they have the Kernel to thank for that.

My google search history from this week goes something like this….

“can you really be allergic to only soy, apples and carrots?”

“how many cups of dry black beans do I need to make 12 cups of cooked black beans?”

“What’s the difference between an American ‘cup’ and a British ‘cup’?”

“Why the f**k are we using cups to measure everything?!”

“what the bajeezers can I feed 16 year old carnivores with an aversion to vegetables, beans, lentils and rice?!!!”

…OK maybe the last two were made up, but you get the gist.

It was a really interesting week though, and I for one certainly learnt a great deal, and I’m hoping that I will now be a little more confident in the kitchen as a result. We were immensely proud of ourselves -we were up at 4.45 each morning, we worked long hours (sometimes 12 hour days), we worked extremely well as a team, without a cross word between us, and I think we did a bloody good job. Everyone certainly seemed pleased anyway, and despite the few dishes that didn’t go down quite so well, everyone seemed to think we’d looked after them well. And at the end of the day….no-one died! Happy Days.

Adding “Vegetarian chef” to my CV….tick!

Looking very un chef-like in the kitchen! (I stole this piccie from Linda's blog-thanks Linda!)

Christmas and New Year Shenanigans

I have an apology to make as this is the longest I’ve not blogged since the start of our trip…I blame wonderful travelling busy-ness, coupled with festive celebrations, coupled with visiting dodgy places with high rates of crime (and therefore not wanting to get my laptop out), coupled with lots of beaches, coupled with lots of dormitory living, and therefore very few opportunities (or inclination) for computer time.

So….here’s a summary of our Christmas shenanigans…

After we left Lost and Found we found ourselves on the beautiful Red Frog Beach on Isla Bastimentos in the Boccas Del Torro Archepelego….in an eco lodge, on a spectacular beach, on a spectacular island of sandy, palm-fringed beaches and lush forest, with the added indulgence of sharing it with these little chaps…Strawberry posion dart frogs (Genus: Dendrobatidae)-endemic to this island, and quite frankly awesome little dudes (as long as you don’t eat them!). These guys are absurdly under threat in part because local children discovered that if they caught them in the forest and took them to the beach, they could charge foolish tourists to take a photo with them….then they’d let them go and the poor little guys would dry up and die on the beach.

Anyhoo, we were here for three days over Xmas and actually had a rather indulgent and chilled time doing, well not much to be honest…There was no wifi, which we actually quite like. We met some lovely girls from the US and from Holland who kept us company, and we generally just hung out on the beach, hid from rain showers (which occurred fairly frequently, and rather spectacularly) and drank beer. As it turned out Bro was sick on Xmas eve night, and was then ill for Xmas day itself, so it kind of passed us by with a skype back home, then a lot of lying around, but the sun was out so we just told ourselves it was another normal day on the beach, and that was fine. You can’t help but feel a little homesick, and we acutely missed everyone back home, but we were aware that we’re in no position to feel sorry for ourselves, so we sucked it up and reminded ourselves that we were in Panama.

After our hibernation at Red Frog, we spent a couple of nights on Isla Colon, the main island in the archipelago. We had two more days of mainly heavy rain, so it wasn’t the exotic trip we were anticipating, but we still enjoyed exploring Bocas town and going on some lovely walks along the coast. 

Xmas evening on the beach

From Bocas we then took public transport back into Costa Rica, this time entering along the Caribbean coast. First stop was Playa Chiquito, in a rather dubious ‘Rustic Eco Lodge’_. I love how ‘rustic’ is now a convenient way of excusing…well, a shit hole. There was nothing apparently ‘eco’ about it, by lodge I think it meant to say flimsy lean-to. I got straight in the (very cold) shower and it started smoking, so covered in suds and half naked, we got moved to another room for me to continue my shower, only for it to give me two quite nasty electric shocks. The smiley Canadian landlady cheerfully informed me that it was known as a ‘suicide’ shower and upgraded us to the premier room….this one had a mozzie net.

Anyway, we had a lovely couple of days there before exploring the coast by bike-a string of stunning beaches with….you’ve guessed it….beautiful palm-fringed back drops and very few people on them! We’d definitely recommend Manzanillo at the furthest tip of the coast-a beautiful walk between cute little coves. We even rescued a sloth trying to cross the road! Such a surreal experience-like we’d been dropped into an ET movie-this funny, semi-green (you’d be green too if you lived your life up a tree in a rainforest), hairy little guy with a tiny head and giant claws, creeping his way across the road as if in slow-motion! Of course we couldn’t leave him there to get squashed, so another couple passing by got their towel and we lifted him off the road and held him up to a nearby tree which he promptly clasped to and up he went without as much as a backwards glance. Magic.

After two days here we headed to Puerto Viejo. This is a Caribbean town with a Caribbean vibe, and everything is Pura Vida….apparently living the ‘Pure Life’ involves getting offered drugs every 5 minutes by 16 year old rastas and 2-for-$5 cocktails that blow your head off, so we opted for the cocktails and whiled away our time getting merry, exploring beaches and trying to find somewhere to eat that didn’t necessitate taking out a mortgage…a heads up if you’re heading this way…CR is expensive…throw in a load of American expats and a shedload of tourists and you get UK prices with Central American quality. The consequence of this was that we ended up buying pasta and tomato sauce two nights running in order to fund our new year drinking habits.

Hello little buddy!

It was worth it though…Puerto Viejo was definitely the place to be for New Year-the hotels were sold out, every bar was filled and it had a good vibe to it….So we gave ourselves 32 hours to find ourselves some new friends to hang out with for NYE…Luckily every other traveller seemed to have the same idea, so our new friends took the shape of a super friendly American, a very sexy German, three too cool-for-school Brits, a very drunk Spaniard, a very awkward American who had just discovered alcohol, and the most beautiful Costa Rican I’ve ever encountered. We were a funny old crowd, but given an injection of free booze from our very-generous hostel, and encouraged by some Internationally-challenging drinking games, and we had a bloody good night! When midnight struck, we were on the beach with what felt like the entire town, Brodie had almost got blitzed by a badly fired firework, and I was just riding on some beer-fuelled dutch courage to help me explain to a less-than-impressed American why she shouldn’t release her fire lantern because it would end up killing dolphins (you can't beat alcohol-infused logic!), and we merrily Auld Land Syned into the new year. One of my favourite moments was when our new friend Kyle (AKA Friendly American) announced that he was placing all of his year’s hopes and dreams on a flying lantern that an over-zealous Tico was sending up into the sky: So we all dutifully watched it fly into the air, only to see it droop and dip slowly into the sea to the collective horror of the cloud of spectators. I did point out that it was never going to be a happy ending.

A happy hour cocktail on the beach watching the last sunset of 2015 

So we finished a spectacular year with a fabulous night, a long way from home and a long way from our loved ones, but knowing it won’t be too long until we see them all again. May we wish you all a wonderful, happy and healthy New Year, that hopefully has better prospects than those of our new American friend. 2015 won’t be one we’ll forget for a while!